A Brief Guide To Camping Mattresses

At the end of a long day outdoors, the first thing on your mind will be the desire for a good night’s sleep. However, while most campers will bring a sleeping bag with them to keep warm, they often forget to bring a camping mattress with them to help protect them from the hardness and the cold of the ground. A good camping mattress can substantially increase your comfort while you’re on an outdoor trip, but there are many options, from simple foam pads to air mattresses to try to meet your comfort needs. If you’re not sure what do get, here’s a brief list of what to expect when looking for a camping mattress

Simple Solutions Sleeping On Pads

Some people seem perfectly at ease with the hardness of the ground to sleep on, but even if they are, cold ground can still sap away precious body heat and make a night in a tent uncomfortable. In cases like this, many people can make do with simple sleeping pads. Usually made of some sort of insulating foam material, these pads can keep the cold ground from taking away your body heat too quick, as well as provide a minor amount of padding. These solutions are pretty easy to carry along, and can be stuffed in its own sack or rolled up with your sleeping back. As camping mattresses go, they’re pretty bare-bones, but that’s sometimes all you need.

Inflatable Bedding Air Mattresses

If the idea of just an inch of foam between you and the ground doesn’t appeal to you, there’s always the option of buying an air mattress for camping. An inflatable mattress can provide you with a cushion of air both as insulation and as a way of keeping you from feeling the ground at all.

Using an air mattress when camping provides you with a way of keeping almost as comfortable as at home, but this solution weighs more than a sleeping pad would, since in addition to the mattresses itself, you need to bring some method of blowing it up, which usually means some sort of heavy, battery-operated compressor. Also, if you spring a leak and don’t have patches, or if you fill the mattress improperly, you’ll end up sleeping with your weight on the ground anyways, since these camping mattresses can sag easily.

Military Solutions Army Cots

If neither pads nor air mattresses for camping appeal to you, the next step up in your choice of camping mattresses is to go for a cot that mimics the ones army members use while on the field. While these cots can weight nearly twenty pounds, thus adding quite a bit to the weight of your pack, they are also a great solution for removing you from the ground entirely. Because they have a structure that comes from a sturdy frame, a cot can keep you off the ground with no question, keeping you from sleeping with rocks digging into your back. But whether you go with this solution or something simpler, a camping mattress will certainly help you to sleep better while you’re on your trip.

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